Tag Archives: BlogTV

Time for a long overdue update.

I have discovered and learnt all sorts of things since coming across the YouTube community. (Within this ‘YouTube community’, I include Twitter, BlogTV and all those other inter-related communication networks.) I’ve met amazing people through them and been to places that I’d never have gone to. I’ve made friends of all ages and now communicate with people from all over the world. In other blogs I’ve talked about this friendship side before.

Nevertheless there is an alternative side to it.

For the first time ever, I’ve learnt to really dislike people. Up till now I’ve had my few good friends, a larger circle of general friend, those others I’d class as acquaintances, and finally those who just had no meaning to me. Within this last group would be those who I did not like. There would be no real feeling of ‘dislike’ just a more negative indifference feeling. Of ignoring, or kind of allowing for their presence but not letting them get to me. A case of accepting that there will be good and bad in life, so best you just get on with life.

However since seeing and experiencing the hostility and bickering that has gone on over the last couple of years (some – but thankfully only a small amount – directed at myself); the antagonism, jealousies, bitterness; some so petty, but so much quite aggressive and destructive, I find myself now actually learning to truly dislike others. Not just indifference, but proper dislike, of feeling ofl distaste at their presence should they be near to me. This is something that has never happened before, and is starting to reflect through to my every day life. Where before I was happy enough to work with those who I previously had little time for, now, well, as this involves work (who pay my wages and as such allow me to live life) I shall refrain from putting my thoughts in writing.

It’s a shame that this has happened, and it’s certainly making me think as to how or what I want to do with YouTube. One thing I can’t do and that’s undo the past, so I guess I’ll have to live with it, the positives of YouTube still outweigh the negatives. A matter of reminding myself that there are still some amazingly good people out there.

(Perhaps having got this overdue update out of the way I’ll post more regularly.)

I wonder if anyone actually reads these blogs?
A couple of week-ends ago and it was Glasgow down to Bury St. Edmunds for Tom’s musical Gathering. (Commented on that below.) This week-end just passed involved going down with a friend to London and the Thibils YouTube Gathering. A bit of a diversion occurred when on the train down (Friday afternoon) my phone rang and it was Tom Milsom wanting to know if I wanted to go to the MCM (movie comic media) Expo at the Excel centre. This was happening on Saturday morning, so go to this first then move on to the Gathering in the afternoon. Sounded good to me. If I’m going to spend the time and money travelling half way across the country, I might as well get my money’s worth of events.
So myself (and Brian) met up with Tom and Jacob on Saturday morning and headed off to the East End. Ummm…. Docklands Light Railway!!! Ummm….. Services not running, little information, unhelpful staff, a replacement bus service that involved waiting 45 minutes for a bus… what a load of crap! If London thinks it’s going to make a success of the Olympics an a few years time, it had better get it’s finger out of its arse and get things sorted.
The comic expo was great fun, so glad Tom alerted me to it. Then on to the Gathering. No apologies for saying what I have said before – Gatherings are great places for meeting people and forming friendships. No need to worry about never having been to one before, you very quickly muddle in with the rest of the crowd. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and met quite a few people who up till then I had only ever electronically talked to. It’s really nice to be able to put an actual 3-D face to these relatively remote contacts.
There’s also a slightly more serious side to it. I’m not your stereo-typical young, cute looking, probably musically talented, school / student type YouTuber, but middle-aged adult doing a 9 till 5 job who should have better things to do than to spend time on YouTube and watching BlogTV. But I don’t, so I do spend time watching videos, and occasionally uploading them myself, and I do spend time chatting to some of these ‘stereo-typical young, cute looking, probably musically talented, school / student type’ users. One thing that has amazed me is the way above average level of intelligence most of these people have. I have learnt more off them over the last year of being around YouTube than in any number of ‘real-life’ years being around (dull boring, though still intelligent) adults!
So it’s important to me that these people who I talk to or message can see and meet me, and see exactly who or what I am. They can talk to me, or talk to others who in turn know me, and can then make up their own minds.
Thinking of YouTube, or even Skype, this whole system of easy (not just across national border, but across continents) group social communication thing could have huge repercussions in about ten years time. This is when the current late teenage or those in their early 20s users, who are used to this sort of border-free and cross-cultural system, come into jobs and positions of influence and importance. Their ideas of both social and national boundaries will be very different to that of their parents. Will be interesting to see how things develop.
Anyway, roll on the next Gathering.
See you there 🙂

Had a bit of fun last week-end. Friday morning and hire a car here in Glasgow and then head across to Edinburgh airport to pick up a friend flying across from America. I guess I’d better be careful on the use of the word ‘friend’. This was someone I’d never physically met before, but had got to know recently through things like YouTube – one of those ‘internet friends’ that so many uninformed adults seem so paranoid over.
Back to Glasgow to pick up another friend (someone who I now regularly share a coffee with, but first noticed through BlogTV – internet contact again). Then head off down to Bury St. Edmunds to meet Tom and Ed. These are two brilliant musicians I know, and no prizes for guessing that my first contact with them was internet related (YouTube; Tom – Hexachordal, Ed – Eddplant). Down there they were performing some of their music to a small crowd of others, most of whom I know and had also initially met through things like YouTube.

Drive back up on Sunday, then Monday around Glasgow meeting up with one or two others. Again, one way or another, these others were first met because of the internet. Tuesday, and it’s time for Americans to head back to America.
I now have more ‘Real Life Friends’ who mean something to me and that I meet and socialise with on a regular basis but who I first discovered through the internet, than ‘Real Life Friends’ who were just met in ‘real life’. The same goes for my contact list on my mobile phone – dominated by internet related contacts.
Social networking through the internet is rapidly becoming a very physical-social situation. Social networking sites are no longer just made up of individuals, but of interacting social groups. People know people, groups know groups. New individuals making contact can be quickly checked out and if anything suspicious found, then others can be alerted.

I now feel *far safer* when first meeting someone if I have already made some sort of contact with them through the internet compared to meeting some stranger in the pub or any ‘real’ location where I just don’t know who this person is.

This whole thing of people ‘moving on’ has got me thinking a bit. Everyone has their own reasons for actually signing up to things like YouTube or BlogTV (rather than just viewing anonymously) and then starting to put up their own videos.

In turn people have their own reasons for stopping.

For those who don’t stay long, perhaps boredom, or it wasn’t what they expected. Perhaps they expected too much and thought that as soon as they put up a video they’d get hundreds of views? It does happen, but *not* very often!
On the other hand, for those who have been around for some time, maybe their reason for originally starting was to be able to express themselves, and now that desire has been fulfilled. Perhaps it was to develop friendships, and they now want to maintain those friends through more direct means of contact. Maybe they’re just getting tired of it and it’s becoming a chore.

If you’ve been busy doing videos and have reached a peak and you can’t see your next objective or peak to aim for, then the only way ‘forward’ is down, and once you start going down you’re in the shit. Reversing a downward trend is almost impossible. Far better to stop while you’re ahead, take a break and have some chill-out time. Some time to recharge and take on fresh ideas. Some time to ‘grow up’ and see the whole thing from the perspective of someone that bit older. Maybe time to think of a change of style.

Also so much of this YouTube stuff can involve helping others, sometimes directly in your videos, chat, and responses. Sometimes indirectly by providing moral support in putting up your videos. Just the fact that you’ve put a video up and it’s available for others to watch and comment on can be of benefit to those who are not so good at directly socialising or interacting with others.

However you can’t help others and you definitely can’t help yourself if you are tired and fed up.

So if it’s time to move on, then it’s time to move on. There will be others in the wings ready to fill any gap, doing things in their own style and ways. Then once you’re ready to return, great, return. You’ll be that bit older and that bit wiser, and probably tackle things in a more mature way.

I can quite sympathise with Alex Day over closing off much of his ‘Nerimon’ internet stuff. I like YouTube (& BlogTV), but things like twitter, well, now the novelty has worn off it’s becoming more irritating than anything else. One trouble for me is that it can be very fast-moving, and if you have more of a life than just sitting on the internet and having a twitter browser page open, then it’s very easy to get left behind in some conversation. Don’t look at it for a day and you may have pages of tweets and ‘half complete’ conversations to work your way through. Facebook, I just keep that because many people use it as a way of highlighting YouTube Gathering. Bebo, once very popular with the student crowd around me so having access to it was handy, but it’s fallen out of favour and I never bothered with it other than as a back-up blog channel. I quite like DailyBooth and will probably stick with that for a while.

I like the internet. I want to use it. I enjoy this sort of technology stuff. My first e-mail address, or mailbox as it was called then, I got over 20 years ago. But I want it so *I* use *it*, not to have it control and dominate my life. I guess it does dominate – I’d be totally lost without it – but I still want it such that *I* have control and *I* decide over when and how I use it.

So go for it Alex, and everyone else who wants to. Get rid of the non-essential crap that just distracts you away from life. Keep the core elements, the rest will still be here if you want to return.

First few 1 minute videos up. So far so good. It does, however, take me hours rather than minutes to get each one done. What has been interesting is looking around one or two other experienced, regular YouTube / BlogTV uploaders who are doing the VEDA thing, and seeing that this putting something up every day has been giving them problems. Even for experienced vloggers it’s not been as easy as it looks; a bit reassuring for us mere mortals. I’ll just stick with my attempts of twice during the week and once on the week-end.
Doing it just for 1 minute dose add an extra level of complexity to it though. No, ‘oh I’ve finish early so stop now’. No being able to take time to talk about something. Just 60 seconds to work with. Though I will admit my 60 seconds is plus or minus 5 seconds or so. I’ve mentioned in other places, peesemould, who managed to do a YouTube minute a day video for a year!

Easter long week-end over. Managed to get out on my bike (Honda 500) for the first time in ages. Went down to a local seaside town of Largs. Headed down mid morning time (holiday Monday) and the traffic was not too heavy. Left to returned to Glasgow (earlier than anticipated in order to meet a friend) about 2 p.m. and on my way out passed around 4 miles of stationary traffic all trying to get into the town! Then I found myself in a bit of a queue of slow moving vehicles, however being on a bike enabled me get passed everything fairly easily. What was causing the blockage – one of those ‘old grannies’, I’ll guess around 70 or 75, could hardly see over the steering wheel, travelling at a speed that was causing huge problems to other road users. I do appreciate that, especially in more rural areas with limited public transport, the car is important to enable people to travel and get around. However a style of driving that may have been acceptable 40 years ago when there was far less traffic on the roads (and the whole of life went at a slower pace) is now a style that is not suitable in today’s conditions.

It’s a two week Easter break for the students, but most are in busy building projects. It’s really showing now with deadlines approaching; those who have made the effort and those who have not!

New Year’s come and gone, some good BlogTV stuff over that period. And now it’s the middle of exam time at Uni. Whoever had the ‘bright idea’ of having exams at the start of January should have their bollocks crushed between two bricks! Why not start the Uni term / semester a couple of weeks earlier and then hold the exams before Christmas, even if they are not marked till January?
Of course, with the students concentrating on exam stuff they’re not bothering me with prokect work. This does mean I have no excuse now for not getting on with all those tasks that I hate doing but have managed to delay and delay. Oh Shit, never mind.
Another Gathering attended in January, down in Sheffield. Well attended with a few well known YouTubers, which was nice. A bit too cold and wet, but then it is the middle of winter, so what in the fu*k do you expect!!! However I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Sheffield may be very nice as an open-planned city centre, but it does mean that there are very few covered places that a large crowd can go to and not be in the way, or upsetting security staff. Not a problem being stuck outside when it’s warm, but not when it’s cold, wet and rather windy. But still had a good time 🙂

There was I, quite innocently walking past the Students’ Union last Friday (Halloween,and the Union running a 12 hour – 8pm > 8am session) when I saw a couple of people I know who were on their way in, so stopped to talk to them. Then found myself tricked (yes, tricked I tell you, tricked again) into going in!

Well, we managed to find a bit of space in an upstairs bar (the Barony was heaving), but after about an hour I found myself feeling quite out of place and uncomfortable, being one of the few not dressed up for the occasion. Luckily home is only 15 minutes walk away so I escaped out, came home and managed to generate up an all black clothing rig and zapped my face with some white makeup, and with blackened eyes. (Anyone asking as to why I happen to have white and black makeup at home will be rewarded with a swift kick in the nuts!) Back to the Union and feeling a lot more like joining in. Left a little before 2 am generally having had quite a good night. Some of the guys and girls there really had made an excellent effort. Tried to do a live BlogTV session from there, but the sound was buggering me around on my little net-book. (More on that later perhaps.)

Had some awesome week-end. Wanted to go down to London just for Saturday, so thought I’d try the Megabus down overnight Friday night, getting to London around 7:30 in the morning (so solving any accommodation problems), have the day in London, returning on the Saturday midnight run back up to Glasgow.

Well, it may have been cheap, and it may have solved the problem of paying London overnight hotel prices, but basically it was crap. Uncomfortable cramped seats in a vehicle that did not lend itself to encouraging sleep. Shit, an interesting experiment, but not one to repeat.

As for London, it was for a YouTube Gathering. A cross-section of YouTubers, some famous with thousands of subscribers, some just everyday users, all meeting under the London Eye at lunchtime, just to chill-out with each other for the rest of the day. Spent time around the Eye area, moved to Trafalgar Square (and suitably invaded the lions), across to the Science Museum (got in a little before closing time- just), then back to the Eye, the party generally splitting up around 10:00 pm. Met some amazing guys and girls. Managed to do some live uploading to BlogTV, though screwed up on the sound. Made various videos, now up on YouTube. A ***totally brilliant*** day out.

Thought I would try something a bit different. Uni has not yet restarted, but the students’ union Games Room bar is starting to fill up again – especially on a Tuesday. Guys and girls are heading back into the city getting accommodation sorted out, quite a few of the local colleges have restarted, and those guys use the place too. So I thought I’d take up my lap-top (never go far without it) and a small USB webcam, and see if I could go live from there via my stressedtechnician BlogTV account.
First tried networking by using the local wireless set-up, but the university firewall blocked enough of the channels used by BlogTV to stop it working. So plugged my phone to the lap-top and used that to go onto the internet.
Pleasantly surprised as to how well it worked. My phone typically downloads at around 1 Mbps and uploads at around 330Kbps. Watching the data feed, upload speeds to BlogTV varied from say 80Kbps when there was no movement or change in the picture, to around 250Kbps when there was a large amount of activity.
Kept it going for about 20 minutes. Somehow managed to get 6 viewers, which surprised me considering this was done unannounced or anything like that. One commented that they thought the place looked very sterile, rather like their school cafeteria! Mind you, they were getting a very restricted view. Might give it a try again next Tuesday, probably between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
But it did show to me the flexibility of mobile internet stuff.
(Mind you, if I’m going to wave a webcam at half-pissed students wanting to show off, I’d better keep a finger near the Kill Transmission button!!!)